David Burton is confident his original music for “Something Amish! The Musical” is faithful to its inspiration. Sort of.

“The music is very folkish, very similar to what I understand Amish music to be,” Burton said. “Of course, I don’t know much about it. It’s not recorded. They’re standoffish about others doing it.”

The musical, though, isn’t meant to be full of documentary-like detail. Instead, it’s a comedic take on a serious topic: The rash of beard cutting committed by one Amish sect against another in Ohio last fall.

“When I started off, it was going to be really campy, almost a cartoon,” Burton said. “But it got more serious. We are talking about deeply religious people.”

The show continues through March 31 at Metropolitan Community Church, 2123 S. Polk St.

The beard-cutting in Ohio wasn’t the result of some prank gone awry. It was actually an act by a breakaway sect that was protesting being ostracized by other branches of the Amish community.

“It was a way to bring these elders back down,” said Lars Maurseth, who stars as Jakob Younger and co-directs and choreographs the show. “A lot of these elders had been growing beards since they were teenagers. ... (The breakaway sect) wanted to make them see how bad they felt about being shunned by doing something horrible to them.”

Instead of staying a matter that, like most, was dealt with solely within the Amish community, 12 members of the sect are now charged with committing federal hate crimes.